


Line Please!

by SpencerWinterSoldier



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Actors, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Slow Burn, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-24 22:15:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3786229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpencerWinterSoldier/pseuds/SpencerWinterSoldier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers is a struggling actor living with his childhood best-friend and similarly struggling actor James Barnes in a one bedroom apartment in NYC. The two are both trying to get their acting careers off the ground but, it's a rough industry. Incredibly, Bucky has just landed a lead-role in an off-Broadway play. Steve has to deal with worries about being left behind and the growing romantic feelings with which he's been looking at Bucky. Does Bucky feel the same? Will Steve ever get an acting gig? What's going to happen if Bucky is wildly successful and Steve never makes it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wondering Where

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy this! 
> 
> You can always follow me on tumblr at www.virgilinasgard.tumblr.com

Steve was a mess of tousled hair. His was face strained red, his blue collared shirt was half-untucked from his jeans, and drenched wet with pit stains. He was panting, trying to catch his hitching breath as he gave a disinterested looking man at the front desk his first and last name. “I’m here for the audition,” he said.

He’d woken up twenty minutes late. Of course, the fuckin’ power in his apartment had gone out the night before. He’d opened his eyes to an alarm clock flashing 12:00 in bright red letters over and over again. It felt almost like the clock was rubbing it in. Served him right for forgetting to set a phone alarm as backup. 

Tripping over himself as he struggled to pull on the shirt. It was more than a few sizes to large, and it wasn’t hard to find a shirt too big for Steve. He hadn't had enough money for laundry this week and, well, this was the last one that left. He dug the least ragged pair of jeans he could find out of the laundry hamper and pulled them on. He just remembered the zipper as he was running, stumbling over himself, out the door. 

The subway had taken a freaking eternity, of course. He’d had to run six blocks when before he barreled into the building, a huff of sweat and panting. 

Not that any of his asthma inducing sprinting had made a difference, or been even a little necessary. The auditions were running over an hour late so he had time to sit and steep. Steep in the nervousness. 

 

There was a anxious pacing outside the door. A general uneasiness permeated the air and wafted like the scent of sewage through the city streets. There were the few who were actually walking from one end of the room and back, over and over, muttering lines. They drove Steve a little crazy. Mainly because he wasn’t far from doing the exact same anxious walking. There was the man whose chest seemed swollen and pushed up double what it had any right to be. A man who looked like he was trying to melt into his chair, had his legs spread wide. His arms draped across the armrests, spooling out onto the table beside him. He was the most nervous one in the room, Steve knew. Trying to look calm and collected betrayed more nerves than all the sweat and needle-leggin in the world. No one had any ease waiting for their last name to be called. Waiting to shuffle into the room with sides and scripts, breathing the last lines of their prepared monologues under their breaths as they entered, was unavoidably nerve-wracking. 

Steve was reading the script they’d handed all the actors -- well want-to-be-actors if they were really being honest with themselves, since none of them, not a single face in the room had landed a real acting gig before. 

“Rogers? Steven Rogers. You’re up,” a pretty blonde intern said, poking her head out from the audition room. 

Steve walked in, his head held high. Most of the red had drained from his face by now but he was still a little short on breath. This, this was his moment. This was when all the slaving and starving and renting a one-bedroom apartment with his best-friend suddenly shifted from being a throwing-your-life-away stupidity to an artistic struggle worth its weight in success. This was his part too, the character--studied and known better than one knew their own reflection. This was his moment. 

“I’m Steve and I’ll be reading for the part of Ian.” Never had a sentence felt so right, so assured, so strong. This was the beginning of something irrevocably wonderful. 

\---

Rejection is a cruel mistress. It lingers on your scent like a cheap perfume, stains your collars in smudged red shame and leaves you feeling a vacant kind of upset with yourself. Not that Steve wasn’t used it. The stone faced casting directors smiling in the least sincere way, the we’ll-call-you-laters, the thanks-for-your-times, the NEXTS, the two hushed whispers followed by silence as he left the room (sometimes they threw his head shot into the garbage as he was still walking out of the door), the phone left silent and un-buzzing on the kitchen counter, checked every couple of minutes “just to be sure I didn’t miss their call” for a solid week. 

Steve was sprawled out on the futon staring forlornly at the wall where they’d put a TV, if they could afford one, when James walked through the door. 

“Hey you, how’d the audition go?”

Steve pulled himself up. One lanky arm shooting up the back of the couch and then dragging the rest of his body with him. His brow pushed together, and his eyes all full of sharp shooting anger. 

“They ain’t gunna fucking pick me. I didn’t get it.”

“Shit they told you all that there? Not even a ‘we’ll call’?” 

“Sort of. I mean I watched them take my resume and headshot and put it in the garbage as I was still on the last sentence of my monologue.” 

“Are you kidding?”

“I wish.” 

Bucky flung his vintage army canteen carrier he used as essentially a purse off his shoulder. “What a bunch of assholes! But it does beg the question: Were you really that bad?”

Steve threw his shoe at Bucky. It smacked Bucky’s shoulder. “Oww! Watch it. I had to ask.”

“I did a damn good job too,” Steve said. “I really thought this was the one.”

“Well there’s your first mistake. It’s the ones you really love and care about, the ones you think you crushed that you’ll never get. The ones you hate and think you bombed, those are your tickets.”

“Whatever. I should have gotten that part.”

“Yeah, probably. You’ll catch a break though I know you will.”

Steve sighed and fell to his back again. “Not soon enough,” he said. 

James went to the kitchen and took the pair’s one large pot and stuck it under the sink. The water poured into the pot filling it until James took it out and placed it over the stove. “I’m sorry you had such a shit audition Steve. But the good news is you’ll get a nice dinner tonight.”

Steve’s head immediately poked up. Bucky, cooking? Will wonders never cease? Not that Steve entirely trusted his friend to make a good meal. 

“I didn’t know we had anything in the house except for ramen and some peanut butter.” The starving actors living together operated on a wildly tight budget. With Steve getting fired from his waitering job for kicking too many people out of the restaurant and getting in fourteen too many fights for the managers liking, they didn’t have a lot of money for, well, anything. 

“I,” Bucky said as he pulled a box of pasta and some pasta sauce out of his army bag, “splurged.” 

Steve sat up. Sure spaghetti and store some bought marinara sauce wasn’t exactly five-star dining, but it was a little miracle. With a raised, arched eyebrow Steve asked Bucky how the hell he could afford this. 

“I’m celebrating Stevie. This is a celebration.”

Oh shit, thought Steve. Bucky had had an audition today too. 

“Oh my god did you land a part today?” Steve asked. He was standing now, all the lethargy gone and evaporated. He saw Bucky smiling as he stirred the boiling water with a wooden spoon. “I got a part today. They had a callback right after the audition and well, I’m going to be in a fucking Off-Broadway play.”

“Holy shit Buck! That’s phenomenal!” Steve ran over to his friend and hugged him in the kitchen. “One of us finally made it. I always knew it’d be you.”

Bucky laughed and went back to the pasta waiting for it to rise and soften. Him and Steve talked about just what exactly it meant for James to have a part in an off-broadway play. Steve hammered him for details. 

“Look Steve. I’ll tell you everything over dinner. Just let me get everything cooked and on a plate and I’ll give you all the gory details. 

Steve listened and set the table. Well, so okay, he unwrapped a set of paper plates and sponged off two forks and two knives that were sitting in the sink. He grabbed the roll of paper towel from under the sink and pulled off two sheets. He placed them next to the paper plates he’d laid out on the living room coffee table. He pulled the sofa-bed back into its couch form so the two of them could eat in the living room, sitting together on the couch. 

Steve had swallowed any sense of jealousy that might have sparked when Bucky had told him he’d had the best day of his career on what might have been Steve’s worse. He didn’t do jealously over friends accomplishments. If anything it made him slightly more upset with himself, but never with Bucky. As he was setting the table though, he resolved to try harder, go to more open calls, work himself to the brittle bones to get a gig too. He pushed the thoughts of all that to the side. They were going to celebrate James tonight, and that was a-okay with Steve. 

\---

They were laughing. The sound of folksy guitar music and quiet voices singing in harmony backlight their conversation with a jubilant ambiance. James had also bought a cheap glass of wine that they were drinking out of plastic cups now that dinner was over. 

“I bought it thinking we could you know, feel fancy for a night. Nothing less classy than drinking wine out of a fucking plastic cup though.”

Steve was light-headed already. His small body’s blood was quick to pollute with liquor. His laughter rang out a little too loud. His speech a little too slow. “Give it time, you’ll be moving into a penthouse in Manhattan, glass and champagne gallor,” Steve said.

“Can you believe it? It’s still too unreal.” 

“Course I believe it. Always knew you’d make it.” 

“Thanks Steve,” Bucky said, reaching over and wrapping his arm around him. He gave him a nice jolting shake and went up to refill their plastic cups. “You want another glass Steve?”

“Hell yeah. But you gotta tell me about this part man. What is the character you’re gunna be playing?”

Steve looked back at Bucky, smiling that cocky smirking smile as he poured more of the cheap white wine. Steve looked at the wrinkles that crackled around his eyes whenever he was really laughing. He noticed the flush red cheeks James got when he started to drink too much. Steve guessed he wasn’t the only light-headed one. He wasn’t the only who felt the floor tipping beneath him. 

“It’s a great part. Really complex and interesting. The play is apparently about this gay soldier. This guy is fighting in Afghanistan. I think. Yeah definitely Afghanistan. He ends up telling this one friend of his though, even though this was still during the whole don’t ask don’t tell bullshit. So he tells his friend, cause their talking and it just kind of slips out. Anyways this friend, this guy immediately starts acting way aloof towards him. Then more and more of his unit start acting more and more aloof too, he just is slowly slowly starting to feel isolated. He’s sure they all know now so he’s just waiting to be discharged. But then, then one night he sees is officer assaulting a female soldier and now here’s where shit goes down because he reports this and he’s a witness but no one in his battalion or whatever really believe him because of his sexuality. It just gets crazier and crazier. The real kicker though is that him and this other guy are slowly falling in love with each other throughout this whole ordeal and its a ride man.”

“Sounds like a lot of laughs actually. A really pick-me up huh?”

Bucky laughed that sweet simple honey of a laugh. “It is pretty serious all the way though. But I’m the lead. I’m the title character. I can’t freaking believe it I still can’t. You want some more wine?” 

“You just sat down and both of our glasses are still full Buck.” 

“Oh,” said James looking down dumbfoundedly at his plastic cup before he let loose and litany of laughter. “That it is.”

 

After dinner Steve washed off and dried the silverware and pots as Bucky lugged their full garbage down the hall. Steve heard the clammering thuds of the bag rolling down the chute. Then he heard James struggling for the door handle. He’d had a lot of wine. 

“Night Steve. I’ll see you tomorrow. You’ve got any auditions?”

“Nah, but I’m gunna go to the library and see if I can’t find another job.”

“Maybe one where its harder for you to pick fights all the time hey?”

“Maybe one where there are less jerks who need fighting all the time hey?” Steve retorted. 

“Fair enough pal,” Bucky said before opening the door to the bedroom and flopping onto his bed. 

The two of them could barely afford a one bedroom apartment in the city. They took turns sleeping on the couch and in the bedroom. They traded places every week on Sundays. 

Steve saw the light switch off in the bedroom. He pulled out the futon and draped two sheet and a comforter over it before crawling inside. His head was spinning but he still said a quick prayer before he let himself start to doze off. He said hi to his mom and then turned over. Bucky had really made it, he thought to himself. He was still thinking about the red blush of James’ cheeks as he stood laughing over the kitchen counter. A small part of him stuck wondering how much Bucky would have to act to pretend to fall in love with a man. Wondering how easy Bucky could imagine falling for a man. Wondering.


	2. It is Sweet and Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve attends an open call for auditions. He is looking for work but struggling to find any new jobs when he sees a flyer calling for serious actors in an open audition. In traditional Steve fashion he unpreparedly attends the audition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> The poem Steve recites for his monologue, Dulce et Decorum Est, is a poem describing the horrors of war by WW1 British poet Wilfred Owen

Breathe, Steve. You’re nervous because you care. This had been a spur of the moment decision. Most things erred that way in Steve's life as it was. He'd seen a flyer thumbtacked into the corkscrew board by the entrance of the library

"OPEN AUDITIONS. SERIOUS ACTORS ONLY." 

He was supposed to be finding a job today. With Bucky having finally landed a role, Steve needed to keep up with his half of the rent. He knew Bucky would probably starve before he put Steve out. Bucky would shoulder all of the rent for years if that's what Steve needed. Steve couldn't bare the thought of being that kind of burden on someone he loved though. Plus he had his pride, heavy and lionlike in his chest that would have kept him from taking that level of charity. Bucky was practically drowning in day long rehearsals at this point, getting ready the his show to go into previews and Steve was just sitting around struggling to find work. After his not so amiable split his former employer it wa proving close to impossible. He was supposed to be finding a job today. Still, open auditions: he couldn’t resist. 

In retrospect, he thought, as he sat jittering, a leg weaving a tapestry of nerves on the floor, waiting for his last name to be called, he should have stayed in library for another twenty minutes. He should have bothered looking up the playwrights name, see what kind of work they’d done, see their history. He should have looked up the production company’s name to make sure they were a legitimate organization that had a history of successful shows. As usual, he’d just leaped at an opportunity to prove himself and make art. Sure, it’d been without much thinking or planning but most of his auditions had been fraught with planning and practice and look where that had gotten him. He was here now, time to jump. 

Still his stomach was more knotted than the pair of headphones he had in his pocket. 

“Steve?” a warm boyish voice said. A small child peering out from the room he’d audition in, no older than ten, searched for the name he’d just called. Things were already getting strange, which addled Steve’s nerves. Though he had to admit, being called by his first name in a friendly tone by probably the least intimidating person that could ever call one’s name was nothing if not spirit-lifting. 

Steve bounced into the room, still riding some of the spur-of-the-moment-decision’s adrenaline pounding through him. 

There was smiling faces at the table. They were looking up, making eye contact as he entered. An eyebrow raised when they saw how small Steve was but it was one more of curiousness and piqued interest than the dismissal to which he’d grown so accustomed. 

“Steve?” an balding man with white and get hair willowing and whisking around his head. He had a layer of dark brown stubble--the burgeonings of a beard. He had round glasses and peered through them with a soft intensity that reminded Steve more of a writer than a creative or casting director. 

“That’s me,” Steve said, fumbling for a reply.

“Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful,” Steve noted the hint of a German accent in the slightly V’d Ws. “My name is Abraham Erskine and it is a pleasure to meet you. I know we didn’t ask for headshots or resumes, that’s because I like to just have a conversation where we can gleam all the information that would be on there anyways, and it’s much more personal this way. Now then tell me about you professional experience.”

Steve thought carefully about lying to this man, making up some production he’d been in years ago, lie and say he was rather successful. It wasn’t worth the risk of getting caught ultimately but he almost blurted out a list of productions he’d never been in. 

“Honestly, I’m still more struggling than actor. I don’t have a lot of credits, and I work night’s so I haven’t been able to get a lot of community theatre or anything like that either.”

“Did you go to an acting college?” Erskine asked.

“I got into a few, but then my mom got sick and even with some scholarships and financial aid, college just couldn’t happen for me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Luckily for you I tend to be drawn more toward potential and raw talent that polished pristine actors.” 

“Well I’m nothing if not unpolished and unpristine.” Holy shit what a stupid thing to say. Steve struggled to not actually kick himself in front of the auditoneers. 

Erskine chuckled slightly. “I do admire your honesty.”

“Now can you give us a monologue please?” Erskine asked earnestly, eyes wide and watching. 

“Of course.” Steve froze. A monologue. That had been something else he’d forgotten, he realized now. He hadn’t even considered what monologue to do. Peoples eyes were starting to burn little holes in him and he say this audition slowly smoking as flames started to fan over it. 

Then he remember the poem him and his mother had always used to read. Dulce et Decorum Est. It wasn’t much but it was dramatic; kind of artsy too if you really have time to reflect on it. Time which Steve did not have and did not spend. 

“Bent double!” he began sporadically, the words more ejected than spoken. “Like old beggars under sack. Knock-kneed and coughing like hags we cursed through the sludge.” The old war poem rang more true with each passing second. The “haunting flares” to which he and his compatriots had “turned their backs” seemed in every way eminent and near. 

Steve’s words were awash with a truth and Steve felt the tired in his bones, heard the bullets at his back. And he saw Bucky when he spoke of the one watched with “white eyes writhing in his face,” dying, and the tears came as naturally as sleep. 

It was times like this when Steve remember why he starved and slaved the way he did. This love he had for what he was doing, was immutable and worth spending a life pursuing. 

He finished, his breath still hitching a little, his last latin words still ringing angrily through his head. Erskine had taken off his glasses and was wiping a tear from his eye. The bulkier, more hardened serious looking man to Erskine’s left--the unsmiling, unimpressed one-- had an impressed, if begrudgingly impressed look sneaking into his eyes and mouth. 

Erskine and Steve let the the room marinate in the silence of what had just happened for a moment. There wasn’t a breath drawn between the six people in the room. 

Then the small child at the door broke the silence. “That was amazing mister,” he said. 

Everyone at the table laughed and Erskine nodded subtly. “I would have to agree. Wouldn’t you say Phillips?” 

“Yes. Yes it was,” the stern faced man said.

“Okay Steve, let me explain what’s happening here,” Erskine said. “I’m a playwright, mainly a European one, as my accent as probably betrayed. Still, my most recent play seemed to me to be indelibly American and so here we are. Phillips is the director and, much to his chagrin I take a much more active role in the production of my plays than most writers. Still, the long and short of it is you, Steve, I think we can all agree have moved and impressed us in a way, I don’t think any of us expected this open call to elicit. So you’re going to come to a callback, but you’ve got a part. Whether it’s the lead, I can’t say, but the point is Steve. You’ve got an acting job now.” 

Steve nodded vigorously at each word. They had liked his work. He was going to get paid to act. His art had moved people to tears, and checkbooks (which was an undeniably delicious cherry on top, but truly secondary to the tears) he felt solar systems aligning somewhere. No, it wasn’t that. He felt his mom smiling. That was exactly what he felt, his mom smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and critiques are always and eagerly welcome!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading. Comments and critiques are always welcome!


End file.
